What elements of the original three Mad Max films are present in Mad Max: Fury Road?

What elements of the original three Mad Max films (Mad Max, The Road Warrior, Beyond Thunderdome) are present in Mad Max: Fury Road? Looking for homages, themes, shots, vehicles, etc.

Mike Girard, I play guitar and make bullwhips.

Max drives a supercharged V-8 Pursuit Special in Fury Road, the same car he had in the first two films.

Immortan Joe is played by Hughs Keays-Byrne, who played the main villain Toecutter in Mad Max (1979).

The War Boys believe that their violent deaths will glorify them and lead them to the “gates of Valhalla.” Although the Valhalla thing is new, this is the same sentiment that Toecutter preaches in Mad Max (1979). Night Rider dies a hero in the first film, as do the War Boys whose sacrificial deaths are “witnessed.”

The Night Rider — remember him when you look at the night sky.

Max is haunted by flashbacks of his dead family, rendering him a “shell of a man” as in Mad Max 2 (1981). Tom Hardy’s Max talks even less than Mel Gibson’s, but the character’s conflict is definitely the same.

During one of Max’s flashback sequences, we briefly see the infamous eye-ball-popping effect.

I think in Mad Max 2 (1981), Max tries to fire his sawn-off with a shell he found, but it fizzles pathetically, leaving Max exasperated. The same happens in Fury Road when Max tries to blast off Nux’s arm.

Immortan Joe uses his control of a large water supply to get what he wants. Master Blaster does the same with methane in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1985).

The music box Max finds in the beginning of Mad Max 2 (1981) has a small cameo when one of the Five Wives plays it in the war rig. Thanks Pedro Malta.

I’ll edit as I think of more. For what it’s worth, I thought it was a fantastic continuation of the series. Bizarre characters, clever humor in all the right places, and, of course, gratuitous practical effects.

Both Road Warrior’s Lord Humongous and Fury Road’s Immortan Joe are men that love military imagery as they lead personal armies across the wasteland.

This imagery goes even further in Fury Road, where it focuses more on how Lord Humongous has brainwashed countless young men into uniformally bald, loyal soldiers that believe dying for their master is the greatest thing they could do with their lives. I’ve heard that one of the reasons Fury Road was delayed was because it was considered anti-war by the producers as Bush Jr. had just sent US forces overseas.

This is quite overt as the beginning of the film begins with narration of the world plummeting into nuclear war. Later on you see “WHO KILLED OUR WORLD?” scrawled in Immortan Joe’s treasure chamber (where he keeps his ‘property’). I would say the ‘who’ in question is the military mentality that lead to nuclear war, and the one that is now ruling over the wastelanMad Max films, The Road Warrior, Beyond Thunderdome, Fury Road, Mad Max, elements, homages, themes, shots, vehiclesd with Immortan Joe at the helm.

Fluid gender identity

George Miller stated when Road Warrior came out that some characters like the ‘Woman Warrior’ were originally scripted to be men, and characters like ‘Golden Youth’ were scripted to be women, but he changed their genders to show that in the wasteland what we think of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ is not determined by sex but by situation and action.

Now you might think that Immortan Joe’s society is a sexist one because of how he treats his wives as property, but then Imperator Furiosa never have her gender come up in a negative manner. You’ll notice that when the Warboys are told to chase her down for stealing the ‘breeders’ (women Immortan Joe has chosen to impregnate to create a ‘perfect child’) they do not consider Furiosa a breeder at all, they consider her a powerful warrior of the wasteland they must now confront. Immortan Joe valued Furiosa as one of his best soldiers and gave her command of his most powerful war rig.

Immortan Joe views men and women alike only as ‘things’ that serve him.

The events of the film viewed as a ‘historic record’ by a future civilization

At the end of Road Warrior, it’s revealed that the narrator of the film is actually the Feral Boy, he had grown to old age in a peaceful world that was built thanks to the heroic actions of the ‘road warrior’. We see a similar ending to Fury Road where we get a quotation from a document called “The first history man”

You also have characters like the Warboy Nux say in the beginning of the film when he prepares for battle “I will be historic on the fury road!”, then at the very end when he gazes upon the friends that changed his life, utters “witness me!” and sacrifices himself so others may live on and tell his tale.

Shai Machnes

Immorten Joe has two sons: one huge, strong and dumb, the other short, deformed and smart. Blaster/Master all over again.